SMAll Victories

KEEPING THE FAITH

Their team was 0-6 and had been outscored 306-0. There was only one thing for Lake Mary Prep to do . . . keep trying.

October 18, 2005|By Erin Sullivan, Sentinel Staff Writer

LAKE MARY -- It's almost game time on a Friday night. Kendra Harnch, a fourth-grader at Lake Mary Preparatory School, looks at her school's varsity football team warming up.

"Some of the guys are puny," she says, wrinkling her nose.

The tiny school's tiny bleachers are full of parents and teachers and siblings and students waiting, as they have all year, for a touchdown, a field goal, something other than zero on the Lake Mary Prep side. The private school is only six years old. The football program is in its second year. Last year the team won two games.

This year, they have been outscored 306-0 in six losses.

Until a few weeks ago, when four players joined the team midseason, the Lake Mary Prep Griffins had 13 players, playing offense and defense, Iron Man football by kids who had never played, or hardly at all. Kids whose parents spend $10,000 a year to send them to Lake Mary Prep for its academics, Latin classes and chess clubs. Kids who didn't know that when you're bruised and sore, you can't sit out, that in football mental toughness is everything.

They haven't quit. Every Friday, they believe they can win.

On this night, they're playing The Master's Academy, a private Christian school in Oviedo with a varsity roster of 30. Master's hasn't won a game either.

Before the game started, offensive coordinator David LaMarre said, "I want you to take your guy across from you and dominate him. You run people over. You run with authority."

He wrote "DOMINATION" on a board in the weight room.

"Domination leads to this," he said, drawing an arrow to the word, "VICTORY."

The kids lined up in the hallway leading to the field, shifting, jumping, talking trash. A Master's boy -- big, stocky, No. 70 -- walked past.

Now, there are eight minutes left in the fourth quarter. Lake Mary Prep's white pants are brown with mud. Master's white shirts still sparkle.

Master's just ran in another touchdown.

The score is 44-0.

Lake Mary Prep has the ball.

Quarterback Bobby Zinsmaster throws it, straight, half the length of the field. None of his throws so far in the game have been caught. Joseph Chalbaud is open on the right. He runs, turns and catches it.

The crowd erupts.

This is what they've been waiting to see, game after game after game. They've got everything else in place -- cheerleaders with silver and black pom-poms, team mothers cooking pre-game meals, dads grilling hamburgers in the concession stand, parents and girlfriends wearing buttons of players on their Lake Mary Prep T-shirts.

This is what they needed.

The team sets up. Bobby throws it left, to Erik Ducharme.

Erik runs and catches it on the 13-yard line.

The crowd ditches their seats and moves toward the end zone. Bobby's mom is so excited she runs into a speaker. The cheerleaders shout:

L-E-T-S-G-O . . . Let's go.

Then the crowd hushes. A silent prayer.

Please, let them score.

It's Thursday, Oct. 6, early afternoon and the sky outside Lake Mary Prep is black. Rain pours in sheets. The football field behind the school is a soggy sponge, water squelching through shoes, between toes. Thunder booms.

"Coach?"

"Yes."

"Practice still on?"

"Yeah, man. Nothing has changed."

One by one the football players come by Coach Mike Mitchell's office, the one inside the gym that used to be a closet until they hired him a year and a half ago. Practice starts in 15 minutes. The players think it might be canceled. When Mitchell says it's not, their faces contort, knowing they can't show weakness in front of their tough coach.

Mitchell has worked so hard with these boys. At the first practice when the program started last year, the boys didn't know how to put on their equipment. They put their hip pads on their butts. Thigh pads on their knees. Knee pads on their thighs. Almost none of the boys ever played football before, other than on video games. They were tennis kids. Golf kids. Baseball kids. Soccer kids.

Mitchell and his assistants have had to teach them everything, from how to tackle and block, to persuading them that being hit doesn't hurt as much as it looks or sounds.

"It's ugly," Mitchell says.

He is 35, handsome and muscular. He was a running back for Florida A&M University and had dreams of going pro until he broke his wrist in his last game his senior year. He jabbed a guy in the chin and his wrist caught on the guy's facemask. He played the rest of the game. But his bones just wouldn't heal. When it came time to try out for the Atlanta Falcons, he cut his cast off himself. But he couldn't even do a pushup.

He still thinks about that, sometimes, and wonders what could have happened if things went a little differently.